Cocoposts

Dependent and Obsessed with Real Estate

Dr. Housing Bubble estimates almost $3 trillion in real estate equity is gone and notes Bloomberg on the State of California's $20 billion deficit.   The Dr. says:

Now tell me, what other industries are going to start hiring to boost the so-called phantom housing bottom especially here in California?  Never mind the astounding fact that according to the California Association of Realtors the median price statewide is now off by a stunning 30 percent. It only logically follows that real estate declining will hurt a state that is utterly dependent and obsessed with all things real estate.

Razing Fix

Building demolition is sad.  It is often not about the building.  The destruction of a structure can be an attempt to fix larger problems by scapegoating place.  The place is destroyed but the problems never go far.   

The City attacking a building with a strike force team seems sad and a little scary.  It implies we've learned very little from the past of condemning entire blocks of physical history in the name of eliminating poverty.  Neither can you solve crime and eliminate drugs by killing old motels.

But yeah, American Inn was an eyesore and so it is especially refreshing to see demolition for the purpose of building something new and better.  Oh, but wait.  That was December 2006.  Then is not now.   Now, "owners of the property agreed to pay for the $120,000 demolition. They will sell it as vacant land, perhaps leading to redevelopment".  Perhaps. 

Also demolished - Old Purgy's at Purgatory.  It went the way of the dozer last week.  You can watch them pull it down on the Durango Herald site.

A new vista will greet skiers at Purgatory next winter after the demolition Thursday of Purgy's, which had stood since the ski area's opening in December 1965. 

  Back then, the quirky shingle-covered building was skiers' one-stop shop, housing ski   rentals, ticket sales, restrooms - just two of them - and the only restaurant and bar.

  Though weathered and architecturally dated, the building was heartily eulogized at an   end-of-the-season bash earlier this month. The death blow came Thursday morning, when a crew used a track hoe to claw   away the building's facade, then pulled out the support beams with a heavy truck and cables.

SunCal Defaults

California news of troubles for SunCal. 

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- The company behind the McAllister Ranch project is in default on its $235 million loan.  That project southwest of Bakersfield was designed to build 6,000 homes, but the project may now be in peril.  The notice of default was filed on Tuesday at the County Recorder's Office.

The three page document said that as of April 15, Suncal McAllister Ranch, LLC, a partner of Irvine-based Suncal Companies owed more than $4.1 million on the $235 million loan Suncal took out in order to develop the site near South Allen Road and Panama Lane southwest of Bakersfield.  The loan company, Lehman Commericial Paper Incorporated filed the default notice and now Chicago Title Company is responsible for collecting the remainder on that loan or the property could be sold.

Photo from KERO 23 News.   Thanks Hunter.

No Tolls I-70

The Colorado Legislature dumped the idea of congestion pricing, in the form of a $5 toll, for I-70.  Truckers, skiers and ski resorts hated the idea  - the trucking industry, especially.  So the recommendation is now for a rail system.   GLWT.

The Denver-Glenwood Springs I-70 section is on the truck route between Chicago and Los Angeles and  the main artery to Aspen, Vail and old mining towns turned to casinos.  It is also the "steepest longest-steep"  freeway anywhere ever.   

From the Denver Post:

(T)he plan to put tolls on I-70 collapsed into a heap of chuckles.  Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, a Colorado Springs Republican who sponsored the plan to charge $5 tolls near the Eisenhower Tunnel, laid over his bill until May 26 — Memorial Day. That effectively killed it because the legislature will be adjourned by then.

"When you're sitting in the traffic jams that day," McElhany said to his colleagues with a mischievous smile, "just think about the $5 you could have paid to be out of it."

From an earlier piece of optimism from Toll Roads News:

Tolls were used in the mid-1950s to build the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, now de-tolled US-36. The traffic crisis on the Denver-Glenwood Springs segment of I-70 is caused principally by high-income vacationers and recreationists, so the equity argument for financing improvements with tolls seems strong.

Image from the I-70 Coalition.

Worry Wine

San Francisco Chronicle reports Napa news:

The worst spring cold snap in more than 30 years is threatening to wreak havoc on the wine industry as three recent days of frost have killed grapevine buds up and down the crucial North Coast vineyard region. ...

The most damage to vines took place March 31 and last Saturday and Sunday, when temperatures dipped below the freezing point of 32 degrees to as low as 27 degrees....

The North Coast growing region is the premier wine land in America, anchored by Sonoma and Napa counties and stretching from Marin to Mendocino and Lake counties. Producing 450,000 tons of grapes every year, it is a $1 billion industry, so even a 10 percent loss would be huge in terms of dollars, growers said.

Rocket Race Tax

Sierra County's spaceport tax passed.  Promoters evoked the magic word, jobs, a lot and there are cool videos of rocket racing and that vagina-shaped terminal.   What's not to love?  Here's Haussamen's coverage.

Promoters didn't talk about the existing facilities and budgets for space research, the huge capital required for space travel, Peak Oil and precepts of a gloomy economy.  This is just the thing for New Mexico - if this is 1960.  Sustainable economic development?   

The touted business plan describes the "commercialization space pyramid" and transports the reader  back to NMSU freshman economics.   

From the study conclusion:

"(The) economic development return on the investment likely will be positive, although subject to risk, under some scenarios, spectacularly so."

There it is in a nutshell (or space capsule for the faithful).  The bar will make more than the runway.  I'll have another Buckaroo Bonzai. 

TIDD Hugs and Understanding

The vote to amend the City of Albuquerque's ordinance regarding tax increment financing failed 5-4 last night.    Proponents for the changes were clear.   In short they said, you should understand consequences before you embrace something wholeheartedly. 

Councilor Cadigan spoke of baseball, failed promises of the railroad builders and the meaning of the  anti-donation clause in the New Mexico Constitution.  Councilor O'Malley described life, planning and TIDDs in all their fractal animal-print complexity.  Along with Benton and Garduno, they demonstrated understanding of the risks and rewards of  TIDD financing.

Opponents didn't say anything that even registered on the common-sense o-meter.  They have unquestioningly embraced the whole idea.  Curiously, Councilor Sally Mayer talked about her intelligence getting insulted and  Councilor Trudy Jones picked up this.  Ken Sanchez talked about how the City might get sued.   Chamber of Commerce, Homebuilders and NAIOP spoke against the bill and evoked the magic word -  jobs. 

A great piece from Planning and Environmental Law by Greg LeRoy about TIF is here.  New Mexico Voices for Children has good stuff here. 

From the LeRoy article:

How much is enough?  The U.S. is arguably well overbuilt in retail space, some of it subsidized by TIF.  The National Trust for Historic Preservation estimates the nation has 38 square feet of store space per capita, compared to other industrialized nations with between 1.5 and eight square feet (and eight square feet in the U.S. 30 years ago).

A 2001 study by the Congress for the New Urbanism and PriceWaterhouseCoopers about "grayfields"--the euphemism for dead malls--found that 7 percent of regional malls were already grayfields and another 12 percent were "potentially moving towards grayfield status in the next five years"; that would be 389 dead malls.

   

Small and Smaller Houses

Update: NewMexiKen says April 19 - 27 is National Park Week. 

At Wilson's Creek National Battlefield, near Springfield Missouri.  On  an excellent sisterly suggestion, I took a side trip to the civil war museum and National Park battlefield site - not a far drive from the airport and of more interest to me than the Bass Pro where everyone else was.   The weather was perfect but recent ice storms and flooding  have been severe and much the trail system is closed.  I visited the Ray House, which served as a hospital during the fighting, and its beautiful stone barrel vault spring house.  Then I walked over Wilson's Creek to a small log cabin where a hawk sat perched.   

Healthy Bees Swarm

From Arizona Central comes good and bad news about bees.

The good news is Arizona bees are healthy.  The bad news is they get mad.

Because Arizona's feral bee population is Africanized the chances are good that swarming bees are of that aggressive variety. "If they find a nest site in the wall of your house or carport overhang, they will be defensive. That nest needs to be removed professionally"

Attacking bees have injured on average three people in Tucson each of the past three years, and have killed three people in rural areas of southeastern Arizona.

But while swarming bees may inconvenience or even endanger humans, it is good for the species, (US Ag bee researcher) BDeGrandi-Hoffman said.  Arizona, as opposed to other parts of the country, has not been affected by a disorder killing off huge numbers of bees. "Only very healthy colonies swarm, and the fact we see swarming bodes well for the health of the colonies."

Experts say run like hell. 

Fair Weather and Housing

Watering, walking the dogs and watching the woodpecker in the walnut tree are bigger priorities than sprawl economics.  My Duke City Fix post today is a fair weather indicator, if only in that regard.   

Dogs on door at Gibson and Broadway SE Albuquerque. 4/17/08